Teachers not equipped to combat online sexual harrassment

By Clare Rawlinson, Kate O'Toole

Northern Territory schools are facing increasing pressure to combat sexual harassment on social media with limited knowledge and training in the area. The problem has even driven one former teacher to take his family interstate for the safety of his daughter.

Rohan Wightman said he was leaving the Territory to find a community where his daughter would not be subjected to the kind of sexual harassment he has witness in Northern Territory schools.

He told Kate O'Toole on Mornings he had seen students use social media to harass female students with pornography, and said schools were not equipped to deal with the issue.

"There's lack of respect for young women - the counsellor at the school was seeing three girls who were raped each week, and she left because she couldn't cope with it any longer," Mr Wightman said.

"The pervasion of online porn has made it more prevalent - they will send online porn to the girls in class ," he said, adding that girls were being coerced to perform sex acts boys see in pornography.

"They see it on porn and they want to enact it, so they make it happen somehow, by getting the girls drunk or pressuring the girls to the point that they think they have to do it to be friends."

Northern Territory Education Union president Matthew Cranitch said teachers were trying to cope with the rise of sexual harassment on social media, but "sometimes they do fall short".

"Ultimately there will be situations where young women in particular have been confronted with sexual innuendo or something more sinister," he said. "The schools do try to cope with those situations but sometimes they do fall short."

"Many schools are incapable of dealing with the issue of mobile phones and social media generally. It is out of control in some schools and they are looking for support from the government."

He said the problems are most conspicuous early in the school week, when students are dealing with the consequences of weekend parties.

But one of the biggest hurdles in tackling the problem from the school's point of view is the resistance of students to confide in counsellors because of mandatory reporting laws.

If a teacher or counsellor has suspicions or knowledge of sexual abuse of students, they are legally obligated to report it to authorities.

"Students don't want to talk to counsellors because of the confidentiality...they want to deal with it themselves. They will be very careful about what they say to counsellors," Mr Cranitch said.

"I know as a teacher it's very difficult to stop these issues - teachers do get blamed for these complex issues and I agree (the work needs to start at home)."

He said more training for teachers in social media is needed to address contemporary forms of sexual harassment in schools.